Psychiatric medications, science, marketing, psychiatry in general, and occasionally clinical psychology. Questioning the role of key opinion leaders and the use of "science" to promote commercial ends rather than the needs of people with mental health concerns.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Wow. I've recently seen a study on aripiprazole (Abilify) that boggled my mind. It was in the category of godawful. I'll be writing more about it, likely within the next few days. Stay tuned. It goes to show that Bristol Myers Squibb will stop at nothing to market their product, but I suppose their recent large settlement for naughty marketing of Abilify already indicated they had no qualms in how they pimped their product.

The atypical antipsychotics keep taking a beating on this site (1, 2) -- lots of hype for these medications treating, um, everything, yet little supporting data.

The real interesting stuff starts about half-way down the second page of the article.

Note: The article originally appeared in a magazine called the Washingtonian back in 1997. It's apparently not available on their website anymore. The link posted above will take you to the appropriate page on The Wayback Machine (Internet archive). Sometimes the archive site is very slow, so give it a chance to load.

This whole investigative piece is well worth reading. Thomas J. Moore does an excellent job in revealing some of the underhanded tactics used by Big Pharma.

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Scientific Misconduct

About Me

I'm an academic with a respectable amount of clinical experience and no drug industry funding. Given my lack of time, don't expect multiple daily updates. Certain things about clinical psychology, the drug industry, psychiatry, and academics drive me nuts, and you'll probably pick up on these pet peeves before long...